Why do so many bad drivers have luxury cars? A new study blames disagreeable men

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2020/01/30/why-do-so-many-bad-drivers-have-luxury-cars-a-new-study-blames-disagreeable-men.html

by wisemang • 6 years ago

25 49 6 years ago

thestar.com

croissants• 6 years ago

The actual abstract [1] is much more informative:

In a representative sample of Finnish car owners (N = 1892) we connected the Five‐Factor Model personality dimensions to driving a high‐status car. Regardless of whether income was included in the logistic model, disagreeable men and conscientious people in general were particularly likely to drive high‐status cars. The results regarding agreeableness are consistent with prior work that has argued for the role of narcissism in status consumption. Regarding conscientiousness, the results can be interpreted from the perspective of self‐congruity theory, according to which consumers purchase brands that best reflect their actual or ideal personalities. An important implication is that the association between driving a high‐status car and unethical driving behaviour may not, as is commonly argued, be due to the corruptive effects of wealth. Rather, certain personality traits, such as low agreeableness, may be associated with both unethical driving behaviour and with driving a high‐status car.

There is also this...interesting sentence in the paper's discussion section:

The present study was motivated by the authors' everyday experience of most traffic violations being committed by male drivers of high‐status cars.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31797376

thrower123• 6 years ago

Now I am curious if this generalizes outside of Finland, or is just another of those things that serves as a marker in Nordic countries, but perhaps not in southern European ones, the Americas, or elsewhere.

beerandt• 6 years ago

> The present study was motivated by the authors' everyday experience of most traffic violations being committed by male drivers of high‐status cars.

kleer0012• 6 years ago

I'd buy that.

Disagreeable people tend to get what they want more often. The most disagreeable people tend to be men.

Also luxury car drivers tend to be worse drivers just by driving those cars alone.

https://clark.com/cars/study-expensive-cars-road-manners/

kazinator• 6 years ago

Disagreeable people get what they want in the short term, but they hamper themselves in the long run.

When you're disagreeable, people will tend give you what you want to get you out of their hair, but in parallel to that, their minds begin forming ideas about how to avoid or minimize future interactions with you.

And that's going to have the effect of you not getting what you want from those people any more; you will have find new people to get what you want.

People also talk: if you're disagreeable to someone, that will not remain a secret that is just between you and then. They will likely be sharing their experience with others, which will warn those others about interacting with you.

So, if we take that into account, being disagreeable no longer seems like a clear-cut optimization of getting what you want as a long-term strategy.

Thus, although the "squeaky wheel gets a greasing", we also have it that "you catch more flies with honey".

piptastic• 6 years ago

I don't think this is necessarily true. I've seen plenty of disagreeable people making it much further than their "nicer" counterparts over a longer period of time. In business, politics, etc.

kleer0012• 6 years ago

Disagreeable people get what they want in the short term, but they hamper themselves in the long run.

From what I understand "agreeableness" is personality dimension where people tend to sacrifice their immediate well being for long term gains for others on one side and the inability to sacrifice the same for the same. This, of course, is subject to their intelligence and ability to monitor and change their own behavior.

One can be low on agreeableness and get along well with others.

rhacker• 6 years ago

less empathy, they are more disagreeable, and they are more willing to fight

In other words, it's a period of high job growth. I've noticed this in my dad and many men - when they have a job, they are like this. Women have it too, but there is less ego driving the entirety of their personality.

bryanrasmussen• 6 years ago

maybe it's a time of high job stress, I know when I'm stressed or going through a miserable time (and I mean exceptionally stressing, exceptionally miserable) I have less empathy - especially for anyone making time even a tiny bit less easy than it could be because I am already going through a lot - I am less agreeable because I am miserable tired and pissed off about the stuff I'm going through, and I want to punch the first person who gets in my face.

strict9• 6 years ago

Finally, a study to explain something most people know-- drivers of BMWs, SUVs, and Teslas are usually more aggressive to others on the road.

This bad and unsafe behavior by these drivers is usually more pronounced toward a pedestrian or cyclist.

anchpop2• 6 years ago

BMWs, SUVs, and Teslas are usually more aggressive to others on the road

I've never heard this stereotype of Tesla drivers. I normally associate aggressive driving (and not signalling) with really big, high above the ground cars and trucks.

forgottenpass• 6 years ago

I've never heard this stereotype of Tesla drivers.

Really? Tesla drivers are like 2% tech enthusiasts and 90% the kind of people seeking the latest and greatest flashy car.

isoskeles• 6 years ago

It might be a regional thing.

kixiQu• 6 years ago

I am a pedestrian who enjoys not being flattened and I definitely have this stereotype about SUVs and Teslas.

orev• 6 years ago

The Tesla thing probably depends on where you are. If you have a lot of people driving the high-end models, that would match up with the assertion. If you’re in a middle class area with mostly model 3s, then you might have a more reasonable experience.

gnicholas3• 6 years ago

I find Prius drivers to be disproportionally bad when it comes to not stopping at stop signs. In terms of merging aggression, big vehicles seem to be the worst, presumably because they know other cars are going to get out of their way.

For reference, I live near Palo Alto.

pwinnski2• 6 years ago

I'm not defending Prius drivers here, though I used to be one. I will say, by way of mitigation, that when you have real-time information on the energy required to overcome inertia, coming to a stop is painful. If every car had the dashboard indicators a Prius does, we would have a lot of public pressure to replace stop signs and stoplights with traffic circles/roundabouts.

That said, come to a freaking stop.

bluGill3• 6 years ago

Most stop signs should be replaced with nothing. The uncontrolled intersection is safer in most cases (in part because nobody has the right away so everybody takes care), uses less energy (see the Prius response), and makes the few cases where a full stop is required for some reason more obvious so drivers are more likely to stop.

pintxo• 6 years ago

Update: For Germany the consensus seems to be that Audi has taken the lead from BMW. /s

totalZero3• 6 years ago

As a society, we should stop whining about competitive people and learn how to either (a) deal with them or (b) beat them fair and square.

sidlls• 6 years ago

One way to “deal with them” is harsh penalties for their bad behavior.

totalZero3• 6 years ago

You can't harshly penalize people for simply being disagreeable, and we already have traffic laws.

Many academic papers have been written on correlations between old age and bad driving. Yet when The Star writes about those papers, it chooses to blame the "transportation gap."

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/10/24/transportation-g...

The root article of this thread is just a bunch of virtue signaling nonsense that falls under the umbrella of a cultural attack on men.

smt88• 6 years ago

"Competitive people" is a bizarre description of the article's subjects: people who drive dangerously, break safety laws, and sometimes cause other people to die.

totalZero3• 6 years ago

The article's subject is a comparison between "bad drivers" and "disagreeable men."

Don't be disingenuous.

paulgb• 6 years ago

I only read the Star piece, not the study, but I'm surprised there's no mention of the theory that men who can afford nice cars are less likely to find a ticket economically meaningful. (This doesn't explain the gender gap, I admit)

ahoy• 6 years ago

I imagine wage disparity b/t men and women is part of it: I'd bet more men drive luxury cars than women b/c more men than women are paid enough to afford them.

_bxg13• 6 years ago

One benefit of driving a piece of junk is that when one of these people is riding your bumper, you can tap your brakes without fear because they have much more to lose than you do.

vsareto2• 6 years ago

Naturally if they have a dashcam (which they can afford to), they then have evidence you're brake checking them

_bxg13• 6 years ago

I do it out of prudence. The routes I take going to-and-from work often require sudden stops as you hit traffic bottlenecks. I'd rather force them to back up now while I have room to avoid an actual collision, than be rear-ended later when I have to brake.

anchpop2• 6 years ago

How could they prove you were break checking? It seems like it would be easy to lie and say you thought you saw something running across the road and hit the brakes just in case it was a kid or something. Plus tailgating is also illegal, which their dashcam footage would prove

stewartm• 6 years ago

In the UK in general, you run into the back of someone, it is your fault in the eyes of the insurers. If you hit someone due to them brake checking, you were driving too close.

bluGill3• 6 years ago

I drive a stick - I can slow down fast without touching my brakes just by changing to the wrong gear. I've done this by mistake more than once - I'm not enough of a jerk to do this intentionally but it is a real situation that drivers behind me better be ready for.

minikites• 6 years ago

Rich people are more likely to literally take candy from a baby: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/study-r...

Being rich is directly correlated with a loss of empathy, so this study is no surprise.

pid_0• 6 years ago

Why just men though? Anyone can be disagreeable and plenty of people who drive nice cars are not men. Can't tell you how many non-male tesla and BMW drivers cut me off without a signal.

seattle_spring• 6 years ago

Anecdote incoming: In South Seattle, it definitely isn't just "white men in fancy cars" that are doing the most dangerous of driving.

My guess is that the higher the loan value is when compared to the driver's income, the worse the driver will be. Ex: $20k/yr guy driving $45k loan V8 Mustang would be a much worse driver than $100k/yr guy who owns his BMW outright.

Side-note: I do not drive a luxury car, for those about to presume.

gnicholas3• 6 years ago

...in Finland. It would be interesting to know how car-buying behaviors (and brand popularity) differ across countries and cultures. Might be the same all over the world, or it could be very different. But why wait to find out, when you can put up an overbroad headline and get lots of clicks now?

JackFr• 6 years ago

The link between conscientious personality traits and interest in high-status cars was found among both men and women. In contrast, the connection between self-centred personality traits and high-status cars was only found among men, not women. Lönnqvist has no clear answer as to why this is the case.

Here's an idea -- because it's all p-hacked nonsense.

The abstract leaves out 1) how this population of 1892 was acquired. 2) what the definition of a high status car is -- is it equivalent to the cost or is it an arbitrary split on make/model? 3) the actual statistical tests and their results. While we see N at 1892, what were the sub-populations. Presumably N[high_status] is low relative to N, which would go along way to explaining the high 'conscientious' result -- that they are both meaningless statistical artifacts.

The present study was motivated by the authors' everyday experience of most traffic violations being committed by male drivers of high‐status cars.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool. - Richard Feynman

This is bad work.

NoblePublius• 6 years ago

It’s not news that disagreeableness correlates with success and income.

aphistic• 6 years ago

I guess disagreeable is one way to say "entitled".

Why do so many bad drivers have luxury cars? A new study blames disagreeable men

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